A Preference for the Muslim Faith
President Obama likes the music if not the words
By Tammy Bruce
WashingtonTimes.com
Over the years it’s been disturbing to see an
increased effort by the federal government to punish
and marginalize Christianity. After all, we know the
separation of church and state is meant to keep the
federal government from establishing an official
state religion; it’s not about eliminating faith
from the public square. And yet if you were to look
at federal actions since
Barack Obama became president, there is a
certain trend of promoting and embracing one
religion (Islam) while punishing and marginalizing
another (Christianity).
This week, as an example, we learned from the Daily
Caller that an Islamist imam based in Pennsylvania,
Egyptian-born
Fouad ElBayly, who called for the death of
activist and author Ayaan Hirsi Ali, has received
two contracts from the federal government to teach
“guidance and leadership” to Muslims in prison.
That’s right. A man who called for the death of a
woman for speaking her mind about Islam has received
almost $13,000 in tax dollars to “teach” other
Muslims in prison. There are numerous Muslims in
this country who have not only not called for the
death of anyone, but reject
Mr. ElBayly’s sort of tripe. Yet they have not
been embraced by the federal government and given a
paid forum with which to influence a group
especially vulnerable to Islamic radicalization.
Strange, no?
Former Muslim Ayaan Hirsi Ali regularly criticizes
the religion’s treatment of women. It was the “sin”
of speaking her mind that generated this craven
statement from
ElBayly in 2007: “She has been identified as one
who has defamed the faith. If you come into the
faith, you must abide by the laws, and when you
decide to defame it deliberately, the sentence is
death.”
The comments received national attention at the
time, and the Daily Caller notes
Mr. ElBayly eventually apologized, but what are
the American people to think when this is the man
chosen by the federal government to provide supposed
leadership to other Muslims?
Looking at the actions of the Obama regime
exposes a peculiar religious fixation, arguably a
comfortable preference for Islam and bizarre
hostility toward Christianity. The administration’s
countless statements and comments by the president
defending Islam and insisting over and over again
what Islam is or is not is a hallmark of this
presidency.
In the meantime, the administration is punishing and
marginalizing Christians and Christianity. As a
small sample, in 2011, Fox News reported, “The U.S.
military removed a large cross that had been
displayed outside a chapel at Camp Marmal in
northern Afghanistan because it violated Army
regulations.” Outraged soldiers told Politico “that
the cross made the chapel feel like home and others
found comfort in the religious symbol. “I really
don’t understand why Christians are always
attacked,” one service member told Politico. “If it
was a crescent moon on top of a mosque, it would
never be taken down.”
In 2013, after President
Obama secured his re-election, Breitbart
reported, “Pentagon may court-martial soldiers who
share Christian faith.” This followed a report that
“Obama
administration Pentagon appointees” met with an
“[anti-Christian activist] to develop court-martial
procedures to punish Christians in the military who
express or share their faith.”
Also in 2013, a U.S. Army training program began to
teach that some Christian and conservative groups
were “domestic hate groups.” Only after Todd Starnes
at Fox News publicized the effort did the Army
backtrack.
Mr. Obama has trouble even uttering the word
“Christian.” After 21 Egyptian Christians were
beheaded by ISIS Islamist thugs in February, the
White House referred to the victims only as Egyptian
“citizens.”
A CBS affiliate in Washington, D.C. covered the
fallout: “Fox News contributors George Will and
Charles Krauthammer criticized the White House for
not referring to the Egyptians as Christians”:
“Wouldn’t you love to be a fly on the wall in the
room where the White House semanticists meet every
morning and figure out how they could probably make
this announcement without offending those who did
it. I think the phrase they should come up with is
non-Islamic randomness,” Mr. Will said on Fox News
Monday. “That would explain just about everything
that they have to deal with, but it does — at this
point, it is beyond burlesque, its pathological,
it’s clinical their inability and unwillingness to
say — to accurately describe things.”
Under the guidance and leadership of
Mr. Obama, Christianity and Christians seem to
be punished, attacked and marginalized, while
another religion, Islam, is defended, touted and
promoted.
Add to that what we learned this week about the
federal government paying an Islamist, who declared
a woman should be put to death for her opinion about
Islam, to teach Muslims in prison.
At the very least, we should all be asking, why?
Tammy Bruce is a radio talk-show host, author
and Fox News contributor.